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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JUNE 23, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 25
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Applications:
INNOVATIVE GRID APPS HIGHLIGHTED
AT PRAGMA 4 IN MELBOURNE
Researchers from across the Pacific Rim met June 5-6 for the Fourth PRAGMA
Workshop, the semi-annual gathering for members of the Pacific Rim Application
and Grid Middleware Assembly. More than 70 application and grid experts from
13 Pacific Rim member organizations continued their efforts to build sustained
collaborations and to demonstrate the advancing technology of grid computing
via scientific applications.
Hosted by Monash University and the Australian Partnership for Advanced
Computing (APAC), the workshop was chaired by Professor David Abramson of
Monash University in Melbourne, and co-chaired by Dr. Fang-Pang Lin of the
National Center for High Performance Computing (NCHC) in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
PRAGMA 4 showcased a comprehensive agenda of distinguished speakers,
real-time
demonstrations, and working group activities. One highlight was a tutorial
that featured the locally developed Nimrod/G distributed parametric modeling
system, a project supported by the Distributed Systems Technology Center
(DSTC), GrangeNet, and Monash University. The tutorial demonstrated Nimrod's
ease of use, and launched a GAMESS quantum chemistry application. The tutorial
was conducted by Abramson and by Kim Baldridge and Wibke Sudholt of the San
Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the University of California, San Diego
(UCSD), and the National Biomedical Computation Resource (NBCR). Sudholt
participated remotely from San Diego.
A demonstration of the Ninf-G software tool, which allows users to access
hardware, software, and scientific data on the grid, featured a climate
simulation that utilized 185 processors contributed by PRAGMA and Asia-Pacific
Grid (ApGrid) member organizations. Other demonstrations featured Gfarm, a
software package for constructing exabyte-scale (trillion-gigabyte) parallel
filesystems suitable for astronomical data analysis, and Gridbus, an
open-source cluster and grid middleware technology to manage distributed
computation, data, and applications, which was put to use on a high-energy
physics code package.
"Taken collectively, these demonstrations show the power of the grid, but
they
also show us that the grid is not yet easy to use," said Philip Papadopoulos
of SDSC. "It is precisely for this reason that PRAGMA was started, to build
teams of researchers and an expertise base to make the grid fulfill its
promise."
Fang-Pang Lin and others from NCHC described the ongoing efforts to apply
Access Grid Technology to assist SARS-quarantined medical personnel in Taiwan.
This international effort, coordinated by PRAGMA, has helped to solidify
international collaborations within the Access Grid community. NCHC used
Access Grid and Data Grid technologies to quickly deploy a network to connect
hospitals in Taiwan with medical experts outside the quarantined areas. "We
are delighted by the support we have gotten via PRAGMA, and pray that the end
is in sight," Lin said. (For information on NCHC's SARS Combat Task Force, see
antisars.nchc.gov.tw/.)
John O'Callaghan, Executive Director of APAC and a member of PRAGMA's
steering
committee, indicated that the workshop was a wonderful opportunity for
exposing international researchers to grid projects in Australia. "The
workshop has strengthened collaboration between Australian researchers and
other PRAGMA members," he said.
O'Callaghan described applications supported by GrangeNet, a multi-gigabit
Australian network linked to overseas research and education networks. These
included distributed simulators to model earth processes and
meteorological/air pollution processes, a project to provide broadband access
to unique, high-quality film and video content in Australian archives, and
projects to archive, retrieve, and access data from optical and radio
telescopes, from a Japanese particle accelerator, and from microscopes at four
Australian universities.
On the second day of the meeting, PRAGMA's Telescience, Biosciences, Data
Grid, and Resources working groups reviewed plans for the coming year. In
addition, a new Middleware working group was organized by Andrew Wendelborn of
Adelaide University to focus on the software that sets up connections between
applications and resources. The groups plan to demonstrate their capabilities
at the SC2003 high-performance computing and networking conference, to be held
in Phoenix, Arizona this November.
"It is important that we share with others in the grid community what we
have
learned, via concrete demonstrations of applications on our testbed," said Dr.
Jysoo Lee, deputy chair of the PRAGMA steering committee and head of the
Supercomputing Research Department of the Korea Institute of Science and
Technology Information (KISTI).
"Collectively, the PRAGMA team has set out an ambitious set of plans for
the
next several months," said Peter Arzberger, chair of the PRAGMA steering
committee. "By working together, we will be able to achieve our goals."
The PRAGMA 5 Workshop will be hosted by NCHC in Hsinchu on October 22-23,
2003.
PRAGMA is supported by the National Science Foundation, SDSC, the
University
of California, San Diego, the California Institute of Telecommunications and
Information Technology, and member institutions. For more information
regarding PRAGMA, see www.pragma-grid.org/. For a
detailed
report on
the PRAGMA 4 Workshop, see
rocks30.sdsc.edu/Meetings.html.
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